Lecture 8 Sustainable

1. The Circular Economy has a major role to play in meeting climate targets:
The circular economy completes the picture of what is required to tackle the climate
crisis. It offers an approach that is not only powered by renewable energy, but also
transforms the way products are designed and used. This framework cuts GHG
emissions across the economy through strategies that: reduce emissions across value
chains; retain embodied energy in products; and sequester carbon in soil and products.
To meet climate targets, a fundamental shift will be needed in the way the economy
functions and creates value. It will require moving away from today’s ‘take-make-waste’
linear model towards an economy that is regenerative by design. In such an economy
natural systems are regenerated, energy is from renewable sources, materials are safe
and increasingly from renewable sources, and waste is avoided through the superior
design of materials, products, and business models.
Previous reports by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation have shown that in Europe, India,
and China, a circular economy could reduce GHG emissions by 22–44% in 2050
compared to the current development path, when implemented in sectors such as the
built environment, mobility, food, electronics, and textiles.
In addition to reducing GHG emissions, a circular economy offers a wide array of
system benefits. It presents a multi-trillion dollar economic opportunity that provides
better access to goods, increased mobility and connectivity, and lower air pollution. In
so doing, it responds to other big challenges of our time including biodiversity loss,
resource scarcity, waste, and pollution. It therefore acts as a delivery mechanism for
several UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In fact, by contributing to
responsible consumption and production (SDG12) and developing resource-smart food
systems, a circular economy contributes to at least 12 of the 17 SDG goals outlined in
the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

2. What is Circular Economy? The circular economy is a

systems-level approach to economic development designed
to benefit businesses, society, and the environment. A
circular economy aims to decouple economic growth from
the consumption of finite resources and build economic,
natural, and social capital. Underpinned by a transition
towards renewable energy sources and increasing use of
renewable materials, the concept recognises the importance
of the economy working effectively at all scales. This means
it features active participation and collaboration between
businesses both small and large, and from countries and

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 cities to local communities and the people within them. Such a distributed,
diverse, and inclusive economy will be better placed to create and share the
benefits of a circular economy.

3. How does Circular Economy reduce Green House Gas Emissions?

1/ DESIGN OUT WASTE AND POLLUTION The circular economy is a framework for
preventing negative impacts of economic activity that lead to the waste of valuable
resources and cause damage to human health and natural systems. GHG emissions
are one of these negative effects designed out of the system. Others include the
pollution of air, land, and water, and the underutilisation of assets such as buildings and
cars. Within this principle there are three key strategies that serve to reduce GHG
emissions.
 DESIGNING FOR CIRCULARITY Design plays a key enabling role for any
circular economy ambition. It is essential in removing negative impacts, as well
as ensuring that products and materials are made from the outset to be kept in
use and/or regenerate natural systems. When it comes to food, designing meals
and products that use surplus food or by-products, for example, can help ensure

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 these do not go to waste and also conserve the embodied energy within the
selected ingredients. However, many goods contain materials or ingredients
which make them, or their by-products, unsafe to reuse as inputs for new cycles.
Design should therefore also consider designing out substances of concern from
products. For most plastic packaging, for example, its very design means it is
destined for landfill, incineration, or to escape into the environment after a short
single-use. When recycling, mixing and downgrading effects are particularly
serious problems for plastics, making a large share of used plastics literally
worthless. Without fundamental redesign and innovation, about 30% of plastic
packaging will never be reused or recycled.20 If ‘refill’ bottle designs and models
were to be applied to all bottles in beauty and personal care as well as home
cleaning, packaging and transport savings would represent an 80–85% reduction
in GHG emissions compared to today’s traditional single-use bottles.21 To allow
for the increased utilisation and circulation of products, components and
materials/nutrients, circular economy principles should be integrated at the
design stage of goods to enable highvalue recovery and to develop new circular
economy business models. This approach will require products to be designed
for disassembly, modularity, repairability, flexibility or biodegradability, and to
enable reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishment or regeneration.

 ELIMINATING WASTE Design can play an important role in eliminating waste.

By designing for material efficiency, material input can be reduced, while
designing for optimised supply chains can reduce waste generation; both offer
effective ways of lowering the amount of energy and materials used per dollar of
GDP. For products and assets, one approach is minimising the waste resulting
from overspecification.ix Currently, in construction projects, around 35–45%
more steel is used than is strictly necessary. There are also opportunities to
reduce waste by tailoring products better to specific uses. For example, the
average European car is parked 92% of the time and when the car is used, only
1.5 of its 5 seats are occupied. To improve utilisation, business models and
assets should be designed to be fit for purpose. For example, many of the cars in
shared car fleets may not need a four-passenger capacity. Smaller cars, for one-
to two-passenger trips in the city, may be sufficient to deliver their service. Apart
from products, waste can also be designed out of systems. When it comes to
supply chains, waste generation can be minimised by reducing the amount of
material lost during production. For example, half the aluminium produced each
year does not reach the final product but becomes scrap, while some 15% of
building materials are wasted in construction. When it comes to food waste
today, one out of every four food calories intended for people is not ultimately
consumed by theme. In other words, 24% of food calories produced for human
consumption are lost or wasted across the value chain. Measures and emerging
technologies such as process optimisation, 3D printing, and can be applied to

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 reduce waste generation during production. Cutting this waste would also effect a
reduction in GHG emissions.

 SUBSTITUTING MATERIALS Material substitution refers to the use of

renewable, low carbon, or secondary materials as alternative inputs to new
production. These provide the same function but contribute to lower emissions.
The use of renewable materials can be particularly interesting for replacing inputs
that are hard to make emissions-free. It can offer opportunities to bind carbon in
products and act as carbon sinks. For example, some bio-based plastics have
been shown to have a negative emissions potential with -2.2 kg CO2e per kg of
bio-based polyethylene (PE) produced, compared to 1.8 kg CO2e per kg of
fossil-based PE produced. When using renewable materials, such as wood, it is
critical to ensure that they are sourced from sustainably managed plantations, as
illegal logging permanently destroys vast natural carbon sinks and their
associated biodiversity, which cannot be easily restored. Furthermore, using
nonsustainably harvested wood products is more environmentally detrimental
than the benefits of using low-carbon materials in buildings. A good example of a
fast-growing renewable material is bamboo. Both living biomass and long-lived
bamboo products have the potential to sequester 2.6 tonnes of carbon per acre
annually, while offering the compressive strength of concrete and the tensile
strength of steel. New timber technologies are another example. These offer the
potential for saving 62% of mineral construction materials used in buildings, while
also offering the potential for carbon sequestration. Apart from renewables, other
low-carbon material substitution options can be considered such as using
secondary materials (e.g. recyclates), high-performance materials that reduce
virgin material input requirements, or materials with properties that enable reuse
(e.g. recyclability, durability). For example, although cement makes up just 7–
20% of concrete, from an emissions perspective it is the key constituent, with
95% or more of the CO2 footprint. It is in principle possible to substitute up to
around 50% of the clinker (binder) needed to make cement with advanced filler
materials that emit less CO2 and provide the same performance. When it comes
to food, selecting and using ingredients which emit less carbon in their production
(e.g. plants over animal ingredients), or better still sequester carbon (e.g.
perennial versus annual crops), can mean a wider choice of low-, zero-, or
carbon-positive products and meals.

2/ KEEP PRODUCTS AND MATERIALS IN USE The circular economy favours

activities that preserve value in the form of energy, labour, and materials. This means
designing for durability, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling to keep products,
components, and materials circulating in the economy. Circular systems make effective
use of biologically based materials by encouraging many different economic uses

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before nutrients are returned safely to natural systems. This framework offers two key
strategies whose main outcome are the preservation of the embodied energy in
products and materials:
 REUSING PRODUCTS AND COMPONENTS Reuse measures have one
purpose and that is to conserve the embodied energy and other valuable
resources used to manufacture products, components, and materials. The more
a product is utilised, the larger the savings should be in terms of resources that
are already embodied into the product such as material, labour, energy, and
capital. Moreover, by keeping products and materials in use, GHG emissions
associated with new material production and end-of-life treatment are avoided.
As such, reuse-based business models not only require less material input but
also emit less GHGs to achieve the same benefit for society. As an example, a
Splosh shampoo container that can be reused more than 20 times lowers
material usage by more than 95%, and as a direct consequence significantly
reduces the energy required for packaging production. For garments, doubling
the amount of time items are worn has the potential of avoiding 44% of GHG
emissions, by not letting valuable garments go to waste. In the case of Renault’s
Choisy-le-Roi facility for the remanufacturing of spare parts, energy savings -
totalling as much as 80%,- are the result of avoided production and end-of-life
treatment (e.g. incineration).

 RECIRCULATING MATERIALS Recirculation refers to the recycling of materials

in the technical and biological cycle. GHG emissions are reduced from avoiding
new virgin material production and end-of-life treatment, such as incineration and
landfill. Moreover, while measures that increase product utilisation and extend a
product’s lifetime contribute the most in retaining the embodied energy within
products, recycling activities which release energy, still require much less energy
input than the production of virgin materials. Steel recycling for example uses
10–15% of the energy required in the production of primary steel. For plastics,
recycling 1 tonne could reduce emissions by 1.1–3.0 tonnes of CO2e compared
to producing the same tonne of plastics from virgin fossil feedstock.36 Recycling
therefore cuts not just emissions from energy use, but also those from production
processes – which are among the trickiest emissions to address. Furthermore, it
is easier to use electricity and other low-carbon energy sources to facilitate
recycling, compared to new materials production, and therefore it aligns to the
target of a net-zero economy. In the food system, recirculating materials means
valorising discarded organic resources such as food by-products and
unavoidable food waste, reimagining them as feedstock for the circular
bioeconomy. The effectiveness of the collection system and the purity of waste
streams are a strong determinant of the type of new products that can be
produced. Purer waste streams can be transformed into new structural materials,

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 textiles, or even new food products. More mixed waste streams can be
composted or undergo anaerobic digestion to produce energy and soil fertility
products. These value-adding transformation processes avoid direct GHG
emissions from landfilling as well as the energy use associated producing
renewable material. When the valorised products are composted or returned to
soil in another form, this also contributes to the regeneration of natural systems.

3/ REGENERATE NATURAL SYSTEMS The circular economy favours the use of

renewable resources and aims to enhance natural systems by returning valuable
nutrients to the soil. This regenerative approach offers opportunities for carbon
sequestration.
 REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE Regenerative agriculture refers to crop and
livestock production approaches that enhance the health of the surrounding
natural ecosystem. Regenerative farming methods can not only reduce GHG
emissions but also sequester carbon in soils and plant matter. Key mechanisms
for unlocking the potential of regenerative agriculture are minimising soil
disturbance and increasing soil carbon content. Regenerative agriculture leads to
a cascade of systemic benefits such as improving soil structure to enable better
water storage and promoting more biologically active soils that generate their
own soil fertility without the need for synthetic inputs. Examples of regenerative
practices include using organic fertilisers, planting cover crops, employing crop
rotation, reducing tillage, and cultivating more crop varieties to promote agro-
biodiversity. Farming types such as agroecology, rotational grazing, agroforestry,
silvopasture, and permaculture all fall under this definition. Combined, these
circular economy strategies represent a set of opportunities that can be applied
to the wider economy to help tackle climate change. To illustrate how such
strategies can significantly reduce emissions, the following sections demonstrate
the opportunity for two key sectors with hard-to-abate emissions: industry and the
food system.

4. Principles of Circular Economy:

1. Design out waste and pollution
 Strategies: Designing for Circularity Eliminating Waste Substituting Materials

2. Keep Products and Materials in Use

 Strategies: Reusing Products and Components Recirculating Materials

3. Regenerate Natural Systems

 Strategies: Regenerate Agriculture (Carbon Sequestration)

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5. Real Business Cases in Egypt Contributing to the Circular Economy:
 Rooftop Gardening: Schaduf https://schaduf.com/
 Al Nafeza:

 Reform Studio: https://reformstudio.net/

 Dampa:

 Inter Solar: http://ise-eg.com/en/index

 El Badeel: El Badeel Website We care paper bags:
https://www.ifyoucare.com/baking-cooking/snacksandwich-bags/
 By Palma
 Nabata (bags from palm trees)
 Waadi food: https://wadi-food.com/